York College's vision and mission statements describe it as an institution committed to academic excellence through teaching, learning, research and scholarship. One of the specific objectives in the college's 5-year plan, which is reflected in the plans of all academic departments, calls for creating an academic environment that values and encourages research and scholarship. The College envisions the MBRS/SCORE Program as a primary means of achieving this objective. The goals and objectives of the MBRS/SCORE Program are: 1) to strengthen the research infrastructure and change the College culture to support institutional research and research training by a series of activities resulting in: a) the appointment, promotion and tenuring of faculty in MBRS/SCORE biomedical disciplines, at least 75% of whom exhibit high potential for research; b) reduced workload for all new faculty in biomedical research disciplines concomitant with each faculty's development of a scholarly plan; c) at least 75% of faculty in MBRS/SCORE biomedical research disciplines participating in grantsmanship activities, 50% obtaining assistance in developing proposals, and 75% receiving start-up funding, d) all MBRS/SCORE faculty having adequate laboratory equipment, instrumentation and space; e) the York College-FDA Collaborations obtaining at least $1M in external funding for health-related research pursued by scientists from both institutions; 2) to maintain, and where possible, increase the participation of investigator-initiated research by a) increasing the number of biomedical research disciplines with MBRS/SCORE faculty from 6 to 7, b) increasing the percentage of MBRS/SCORE investigators by 25%; 3) to strengthen the research competitiveness of MBRS/SCORE faculty by a) facilitating them in meeting their respective career development plans, b) increasing their number of presentations at professional society meetings by 25%, c) increasing their number of peer-reviewed publications by 17%, increasing the number of faculty with competitive research programs i) by 29% in the S06 mechanism and by ii) 25% in R15 type mechanisms. To help achieve these goals and objectives, York requests support for the 5 faculty submitting MBRS/SCORE proposals: 4 Regulars and 1 Pilot. The Regular proposals come from biology (2), chemistry, and social work and the Pilot proposal comes from environmental health science. Two of these investigators are continuing S06 PIs, one is a current pilot investigator seeking Regular S06 funding, two are new investigators. The resources provided by MBRS/SCORE, will help the college continue to strengthen and diversify its research capability, research training capability, and continue to provide expanded opportunities for underrepresented minorities in biomedical research. [unreadable] [unreadable]